What Version Are You Telling?

Do you have multiple versions of your story?  If not, why not? 

In my past life as a sourcing professional, part of my role was building the story as to why we should be purchasing a new service offering.  The other alternative was explaining to my business partner why we should consider changing the current services through a competitive bid process.  Although I never formalized the story’s outlines into the TOM Storytelling model that we teach, upon reflection, I can see how my account did follow it.

Current State – I gathered the facts of the current situation, including who the supplier is, what their spend level was, what their contract details included, how much time was left until expiry, and when the last sourcing event had taken place

Challenge – I would gather the details of what was working and what could be done better from my business partners and understand where they were struggling and where they may not be meeting the company goals based on the services being provided.

Counsellor – I would act as the counsellor with my insights, and I would also gather additional information to help guide a decision on going back into the market, with industry research, white papers, trends, competitive analysis.

Conviction – I would set out the plan on how we would tackle the events, either with a planned negotiation with the current service provider or embark on the competitive sourcing event

Celebration – Once a final decision was made or negotiation had concluded, we would appropriately close the deal (i.e. signed contract, PO issuance)

Clarity – this was the lessons learned from the process, which would be shared with others on the team to learn about what worked well, what could be improved, and with a new or revised relationship, we would improve our business with our new arrangement.

At each of these steps, there is a story to tell.  The audience changes (working team members vs. senior executives); the condition of the event changes (project scoping vs. competitive event updates vs. recommendation phase); and the positioning of the situation changes (from problem identification to position the solution to implementation).  Each of these conditions and stages needs consideration of the audience and timeline to provide the necessary details that would be warranted.

In the case of deciding to go to market, speaking to a business partner at an operational level would include lots of details and research.  I would include a lot of backup to help express my ideas and gain their support to move forward with a negotiation or sourcing event.  When it comes to their leadership, a lot of the details were included in an Appendix.  The senior leadership is not looking for a lot of details to the story. What’s the problem, how is it impacting my business, what solution are you proposing and what are the next steps?  This level of detail is more precise and direct, with more information included at the end if they choose to research more.  Otherwise, they get their high-level thoughts addressed to move on to the next item they must address.

I share this with you from a business perspective and hope you understand how your story can and will evolve based on the conditions you are facing.  You can have a great story that lasts 20 minutes and may only need some tweaks to fit into a TED talk style for a TED-type audience.  But that same story could be heavily reduced to be included as an opening story as part of a keynote. You may only have 45 minutes to deliver, and your story still has 2 – 3 major topic points to follow after that.

When building your story, it is ideal to have multiple versions of it to select from.  In some cases, the long version will prove to be more valuable.  In other cases, the condensed, high-level version will be just as practical based on the audience it is being delivered to, and you will want to ensure you capture the essence of the elements from the model to do so while maintaining the brevity.

Today….take one of your favourite stories, and see if you can create the 20-minute version, the 10-minute version and the 5-minute version of it.  What stays in, what gets tossed, and can the message still stand out in each version?  Let us know in the comments what realizations you found in doing this exercise.